https://retractionwatch.com/2021/05/21/paper-linking-frequency-of-google-search-terms-to-violence-against-women-retracted Skip to content Retraction Watch Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process Menu and widgets Pages * How you can support Retraction Watch * Meet the Retraction Watch staff + About Adam Marcus + About Ivan Oransky * Papers that cite Retraction Watch * Privacy policy * Retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers * Retraction Watch Database User Guide + Retraction Watch Database User Guide Appendix A: Fields + Retraction Watch Database User Guide Appendix B: Reasons + Retraction Watch Database User Guide Appendix C: Article Types + Retraction Watch Database User Guide Appendix D: Changes * The Center For Scientific Integrity + Board of Directors * The Retraction Watch FAQ, including comments policy + The Retraction Watch Transparency Index * The Retraction Watch Leaderboard + Top 10 most highly cited retracted papers * What people are saying about Retraction Watch Search for: [ ] [Search] RSS Recent Posts * Weekend reads: Legal threats, lawsuits, a professor loses emeritus status, and 'the 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill' Recent Comments * YouMightBeSurprised on Journal flags -- but does not retract -- decades-old paper on "correcting" gender identity * Sheikh Muhamma Ramzan Hossain on A physics paper claimed the Koran had predicted the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Now it has an expression of concern. * Matilda Muravyova on Paper likening human sperm to "playful otters" retracted Archives Archives [Select Month ] Paper linking frequency of Google search terms to violence against women retracted [Screen-Shot-2021-05-21-at-12] The findings were, to say the least, shocking: A researcher in New Zealand claimed that Google searches about violence against women soared during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic -- raising the prospect that quarantines were leading to a surge in intimate partner violence and similar crimes. Shocking, yes, but now retracted because the methodology of the study was "catastrophically wrong," in words of some critics. The paper, "COVID-19, suicide, and femicide: Rapid Research using Google search phrases," was written by Katerina Standish, of the University of Otago's National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and appeared online in January 2021 in the Journal of General Psychology. As the author's institution claimed in its headline for a press release about the article: Pandemic response creates perfect storm for self-harm and domestic violence For her study, Standish attempted to use Google to track the frequency of certain search terms associated with feelings of helplessness and despondency, as well as violence against women -- strings like "lost my job", "I don't have anywhere to go", "I want to die", "no one will help us", "how to hit a woman so no one knows", and "he will kill me". Per Otago: Results showed an "overwhelming upsurge" from all six categories from 31 per cent to 106 per cent. The release quoted Standish as saying: "The focus on tackling the pandemic means, globally, the first objective is to control its ability to replicate and mutate. We know this is necessary, but the lockdowns and social distancing have other effects that are only beginning to reveal themselves and they are deadly too," she says. Not surprisingly, Standish's paper garnered significant attention in the media -- social and otherwise -- with more than a dozen news stories about the article (those data are no longer available because the paper has been retracted). In an April 26 column on MSNBC.com, Liz Plank used the study in her argument that: Men are becoming more violent against women around the world. Google shows how. But critics who read Standish' paper after reading the MSNBC piece pointed out that her analysis was, in the words of one group who looked at her paper, "catastrophically wrong." Writing on Medium, a trio of social scientists -- Alison Gerber and Ov Cristian Norocel of Lund University in Sweden and Francesca Bolla Tripodi of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- noted that Standish included not discrete Google searches but rather the results of her own searches -- a critical distinction that invalidated her conclusions. MSNBC quickly corrected Plank's column and removed references to Standish's paper, but the post is largely premised on the notion that Google can and should be doing more when it comes to violence against women. The inevitable retraction notice reads: Since publication, the author has identified inaccuracies in the methodology. Specifically, the article is based on problematical use and interpretation of search entries and their results to draw conclusions about the presence of psychological stress in online searches. As this directly impacts the validity of the reported results and conclusions, the Author notified the Editor and Publisher and all have agreed to retract the article to ensure the integrity of the scholarly record. Standish did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For Gerber and her colleagues, the problematic paper raises serious issues about the practice of science: How did this article get through peer review? Like the author, the journal's reviewers and editors seemed to have been glamoured by the shine, tech fetishism, and naive empiricism of even the most poorly executed digital methods -- without the methodological humility to work together with colleagues from information science, or at least check in with someone familiar with the basic workings of tools like Google. If we want to catch scientific missteps like these, we must recognize that good science takes time. And this mishap shows how desperately we need more robust digital literacy education at all stages of life -- because if PhDs don't understand the basics of what Google returns are and what they are telling us, what hope do the rest of us have? Like Retraction Watch? You can make a one-time tax-deductible contribution or a monthly tax-deductible donation to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that's not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com. Share this: * Email * Facebook * Twitter * Related Posted on May 21, 2021May 22, 2021Author Adam MarcusCategories Uncategorized Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment [ ] Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [ ]By using this form you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website per the terms of our privacy policy: https:// retractionwatch.com/privacy-policy/ * [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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